I didn’t expect to eat one of the best salads of my life while sitting at the bar in the La Folie Lounge — and knowing full well that it was $35. But there I was, in shock at the strangeness of that moment. In the background, Kool & the Gang chanted “This is your night tonight, everything’s gonna be alright” over handclaps while I chewed pickled wild mushrooms and squeaky leek greens to the insistent beat, concentrating on the individual textures of each mushroom — shimejis, maitakes, chanterelles and criminis. On the plush white sofa behind me, a couple was practically sitting on top of each other and feeling each other the way I was feeling that salad.

Of course, it’s possible to eat at the lounge and keep it simple. As the lo-fi offshoot of the 30-year-old French fine dining stalwart La Folie, the 10-year-old lounge has its own menu and personality, consisting of chef-owner Roland Passot’s upscale take on bar food — truffle mac and cheese ($12), Wagyu sliders ($18) and a selection of cheeses ($7 for one) among them. The lounge is a great bargain and, in my opinion, way more fun than the restaurant that inspired it.

It wouldn’t be out-of-bounds to assume that the lounge would be servant to its established sibling next door, much like Thomas Keller’s Salon at Per Se in New York City, which opened the same year as La Folie Lounge and offers a recession-friendly $225 five-course tasting menu that mimics the one in the main restaurant. Locally, the bar at the hard-to-reserve Gary Danko in Fisherman’s Wharf is open to walk-ins and grants you access to the tasting menu on an a la carte basis. At those places, the main restaurant exercises the gravitational pull of a black hole.

Instead of making you feel like you’re sitting in the bleachers, the La Folie Lounge is its own beast — you could easily hang out there multiple times and never engage with the restaurant. It’s that aspect of the lounge that works well with folks who might want a taste of fine French dining without having to commit to the hefty bill that usually comes after.

The menu and approach are completely different from what’s on offer next door (though you can also get the full restaurant menu a la carte or as a prix fixe). The restaurant, which opened in 1988, gives you the option to do a full chef’s tasting menu ($175/head) or that prix fixe ($150/head). The folks who dine there are mainly couples, and on the night I went they were of a broad distribution of ages, young nouveaux riches and gray-haired regulars alike. Servers in button-down shirts and vests speak to you cordially, telling you that you’ve made “an excellent choice, madam,” while gentle French pop music, mainly featuring wispy-voiced female singers, lulls your mind into delicate repose.

The lounge is a lot more engaging. Rather than having your dishes appear from behind a sumptuous orange curtain by a server, you can watch a chef cook perfect little gougeres ($8) to order and tweeze herb garnishes at his station right alongside the bartender. While watching from my spot at the end of the bar, I felt a strong sense of deja vu: I’ve been that chef before at a similar spot in New Orleans, building charcuterie boards and preciously spooning caviar on top of deviled eggs while making small talk with diners drinking fancy cocktails. (Incidentally, I’m delighted to see that the six-divot plate that you can only ever use for deviled eggs is still going strong.)

Deviled eggs at La Folie Lounge.

Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

I also got a kick out of the decor — the ornate wrought-iron fencing on the wall behind the bar and framed shot of the Eiffel Tower make the place feel like the living room of an aunt who hangs onto fond memories of her visit to Paris. A collection of plush white sofas and low, round cocktail tables can be configured to fit your happy hour group or Tinder date. I really enjoy sitting at the bar, which has uncommonly comfortable stools (with backs!) and enough space at each spot for a collection of small plates. The vibe is loose and conversational here, though the food is still taken seriously.

While dining around San Francisco, especially on my own, I’ve noticed that affordable gourmet snacks are rare finds. Often, starters seem to hover at the $12-$20 range — which I get, considering how expensive it can be to run a business out here. So it’s a marvel that the prices on the lounge menu are this affordable, a feat perhaps enabled by the relative indulgence of the menu next door. Here, for example, an order of truffle popcorn is $7, basically the same price of movie popcorn, and they don’t skimp on the truffle bit by just splashing it with synthetic truffle oil: You can watch the chef grate fresh Burgundy truffle over your order a la minute. (Does your local AMC do that? If so, email me!) A plate of seared foie gras with huckleberry sauce used to be the most expensive option by a mile at $50, though with January’s return of the foie gras ban, that’s a moot point now.

During the lounge’s happy hours, the prices on many items are reduced — the popcorn to $5, certain glasses of French wine to $6 and more. It makes you feel like you’re getting away with something here.

The dishes may come off as a little dated to some — and that worried me at first. I admit that the salmon lollipops ($9), with their herbed mascarpone swirl, gave this catering veteran the heebie-jeebies: What next, fancy deviled eggs? But taken with the smart pickle and olive assortment, with the vinegar brine slicing through the fat of the cured salmon, it ended up being a much easier-to-handle take on a lox plate. I came around to the cleverness of how the kitchen turned the nostalgic salmon swirl design into fishy, pickle-spiked candy. (Though yes, I do still have nightmares about rolling and cutting those swirls for banquets back in the ’00s.)

Wild Mushroom and Charred Leek Salad at La Folie

Photo: Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

But back to that leek salad. When you sit down at the lounge, you are given the bar menu as well as La Folie’s menu and told that you can order any of the dishes a la carte. That sounds great, but make sure you ask about the prices. Entrees from next door hover around $60, while appetizers like the salad are around $35. I’m sure most people would be happy to stick to the bar’s offerings: Why drop $35 on a lobster risotto when you could get a wonderful mac and cheese, also with lobster, for $18 instead?

Transportation: Just off the 19-Polk and 45-Union/Stockton Muni lines.

Best practices: No reservations, although I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you called ahead for a big party. Go during happy hour if you can (5-7 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday). The bar seats are better if you plan to order a lot of food since the tables don’t have a ton of space.

Full disclosure: In 2014, I participated in a cooking competition and my dish was evaluated by a panel of judges, including Roland Passot. I bombed hard!

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At least, that’s what I thought until I took the plunge and ordered the charred leek salad with wild mushrooms from the pricier restaurant menu. In the lead-up, servers from next door brought not the salad but a couple of amuse-bouches — a Dungeness crab puff on hollandaise and a raw oyster escabeche. Eyebrows raised, I asked what the deal was. Passot’s wife, Jamie Passot, was sitting a few stools down with a girlfriend and also perked up when she saw what they brought me. Did they sniff me out as a critic so quickly?

The bartender told me that he ordered it for me because he thought I’d be ordering three courses.

The server who brought the oyster told me, warmly, that it was “compliments of the chef.”

The chef behind the bar told me that sometimes they give out amuse-bouches randomly, when they happen to drop reservations next door. “Just the other night, we gave out a bunch of Edam souffles!”

Hmm. OK. I didn’t notice anyone else in the room getting anything, but it’s very likely that none of them were ridiculous enough to order a $35 salad. Though when Roland Passot himself walked up and shook my hand, even Jamie took notice.

“Does he know you from somewhere?” she asked. I shrugged.

What I can comfortably report, with some assurance from the chef behind the bar, is that perhaps fortune may smile upon you one night as you munch on your $7 popcorn. But even if it doesn’t, I think you’ll be happy.

Soleil Ho’s tenure as The Chronicle's Restaurant Critic began in 2019. She was previously a freelance food and pop culture writer, a podcast maker, and restaurant chef. Her seminal work, the Racist Sandwich podcast, covered the myriad ways in which food intersects with race, class, and gender.